Such an imaging device is called a digital camera and is widely used. In addition, a recent digital camera has been improved in color reproducibility as well as in resolution. A known digital camera is connected to a light source sensor which detects light source sensor information such as illumination intensity of illumination light, color temperature, spectrum, and etc., so that light source sensor information at the time of shooting is detected, and thus, color reproducibility of a subject can be improved by color conversion processing of image signal of the subject, based on the detected light source information (refer to, for example, JP2005260480).
However, an investigation performed by the present inventors revealed following problems to be solved in the imaging device as in JP2005260480. When illumination light from the same light source (in this case, the sun) is irradiated onto a light source sensor 111, which is connected to a camera 110, and onto a subject 112, as in the case of outdoor photographing shown in FIG. 13(a), there is no difficulty in improving the color reproducibility of the subject.
However, in those cases wherein illumination from the illumination light 113, which illuminates the subject 112, is not irradiated onto the light source sensor 111 as in the situation of studio photographing shown in FIG. 13(b), and wherein not only sunlight but also indoor illumination is irradiated onto the light source sensor when photographing the subject 112 in outdoor shade from indoor position as shown in FIG. 13(c), the reproduced color may differ significantly from the real one, if color conversion processing is performed on the basis of information of light source sensor 111.
Thus, regarding above problems, the objective of the present invention is to provide an imaging device adopted to realize more precise color reproduction.